Paleoconservative Observations

The Ron Paul Phenomenon

I can sort of understand the Ron Paul phenomenon. I too think the government has grown out of control big, that the Federal Reserve is a mistake, that the Welfare State is bad–both for being expensive and for encouraging idleness–and that our military is spread too thin and our foreign policy commitments are too great. But why am I so viscerally opposed to him? Why do I dislike him so much?

Well, a lot of reasons. For starters, he is not of presidential timber. He has no real record of leadership, rhetorical or otherwise. He has all the ideological purity of a crackpot, along with all of the related ineffectiveness. Consider how much more effective the numbers-based Paul Ryan has been in showing that our country is about to head over a cliff.

He also consistently shows bad judgment. His politics overlap with my own at times. But you don’t see me writing about Race Wars or talking about the virtues of the Articles of Confederation much over here. Why? Because I live in the real world, I realize that politics is about assembling coalitions, and I know that tone matters. We need to be sober, prudent, and intelligent, particularly in public life. We need not alienate whole classes of people for no good reason. We need not allow our concern for truth and candor to come at the expense of fellow feeling for our countrymen and the less fortunate. Ron Paul has none of these qualities.

Finally, he is all too comfortable with monstrous whack jobs such as 9/11 Truthers. He shows a skepticism of the government that lends itself to idiotic pacifism and the embrace of our foreign enemies. Part of leadership is telling the real whackos to bugger off. Paul has shown no courage to do this, because, truthfully speaking, he mostly agrees with them.

So, while I like a few things he believes in, and I don’t think you need to embrace Bush’s invade-the-world-for-world-peace interventionism that is so fashionable as of late, I still think Paul is a huge idiot and I’m surprised he’s rising to the heights he has so far in the GOP primary.

Clearly much of this has to do with fears that Romney is hopelessly unreliable and wishy washy. Perhaps. Romney’s not me, and I know that. But he’s also not crazy, disorganized and immature, and not being crazy, disorganized, and immature are the first requirements of being president.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Paul’s not suggesting moral equivalence, but that they are more moral than us. He’s constantly repeating the bromide that the only reason Muslims attacked us was because of our foreign intervention in Muslim lands. If only we would leave them and the rest of the world alone, they and the rest of the world would leave us alone. Translation: we are the only aggressive ones, other nations are by nature not aggressive and only react to our attacks.

This is typical thinking for libertarians, and the Left in general. Why? Because that means the real enemy is an internal domestic enemy, and that the aggression we face from foreign opponents is only a by-product of our political opponents’ false policies. The foreign other is blameless, meaning that Leftists (libertarians included) can:

a) continue to idealize foreigners as blameless noble savages whom they defend against the aggression of their compatriots
b) justify their hate of domestic political opponents, which is more satisfying than hating distant and unfamiliar foreigners
c) believe in the perfect world that would ensue if only their policies were implemented within the United States (the rest of the world being irrelevant without our aggression that is).

“We need not alienate whole classes of people for no good reason. We need not allow our concern for truth and candor to come at the expense of fellow feeling for our countrymen and the less fortunate. Ron Paul has none of these qualities.”

Whom does Ron Paul alienate?
When does Ron Paul do anything to stomp on the less fortunate?

Can you name one politician who does not alienate people? I work in an industry constantly under regulatory assault. Are people in my industry (a group) alienated by those seeking to regulate our peaceful commercial trade? Or do you mean something else? Like maybe those of us who know that Formula One racing is awesome while baseball is not, have to be alienated when the President talks about baseball, but does not mention the more kick-ass, more brutual and more awesome Formula One? When will F1 fans get their due? Is that what you mean by alienated? Or do you mean, those of us who recognized HBD and don’t want forced integration are forced by both Dems and Repubs to live with the forced integration of our public schools? Seriously, what do you mean by alienated?

I am wondering if you can actually attack Ron Paul using a series of defined metrics without making everyone else seem worse. I think you will have a very difficult time in such a task.

He alienates conservatives by promoting open borders, apologies for Arab terrorists, and lately making excuses for black criminality all in the service of his real passion: anti-government libertarian absolutism. Note too I qualify my point on alienation, and my broader point is that his concern for purity and all around weirdness make him weak in the important skills of persuasion and assembling coalitions. He’ll be gone soon, thankfully.

You claim he alienates conservative because he promotes open borders. But so has every republican in memory; avoiding the label of “racist” is paramount in politics. What do you expect? There is not a Republican alive who has anything intelligent to say on the issue of borders. So if you are attacking Paul for the very same behavior that other Republicans favor, then that is a bit of a joke. To say he is unfit for the same reason that all other candidates is unfit is no analysis at all. But what is interesting is that unlike other Republicans, who hold no ideology true, Paul is against benefits for illegals. That makes him better suited on the issue of borders than any other candidate.

Apologies for Arab terrorists. Really. Where does he apologize for them. You mean when he speaks the truth that if you poke someone in the eye, don’t be surprised when they come back and seek revenge?

Making excuses for black criminality. He has done no such thing. He has declared some laws to have a negative racial effect and maybe he is right. But that is far different from excusing criminality. To excuse criminality is to mean that you don’t care about it. But Paul does care about the law, that is what makes him different. Can you name one Republican who doesn’t excuse black criminality or low black academic and career achievement? I bet you cannot. Surely you cannot name three and that is telling.

All in all, because you do not like someone who operates by a philosphy of respect and freedom, you berate them as weird. But isn’t it stupid to pretent that any candidate can meet your criteria? Even P.B. who you seem to favor is one giant alienating machine. He alienates conservatives who favor abortion because it reduces the size of the herd.

At least one on of the criteria you have chosen is so impossible to for any candidate to meet, that you cannot be serious about using it to berate Paul. Every candidate is alienating. I would also say that every candidate excuses Arab terrorism, when they decide on a risk/reward scenario any action that may inflame some Muslims, and certainly every candidate panders to racial tensions by not spewing forth the Bell Curve.

So what is your point? That you find Paul to be weird? But someone P.B. isn’t despite not realizing that banning abortion would result in a crap load more black people who would pull the country down? Isn’t that weird that P.B.’s love for anti-abortionism, if it were to come to pass, would sink the country by filling it up with breeders? How weird is it that such a smart man cannot admit the problems with his own beliefs?

“The most radical faction of covenant theology is called Christian Reconstructionism, a movement founded by R. J. Rushdoony that seeks to turn the book of Leviticus into law, imposing the death penalty for gay people, blasphemers, unchaste women, and myriad other sinners.”

“Ron Paul has long been a favorite politician of Christian Reconstructionists….“The people who I know who are big Ron Paul guys are old school Reconstructionists,” says Paul supporter Brian D. Nolder, the pastor of Christ the Redeemer Church in Pella, Iowa.

It might seem that Paul’s libertarianism is the very opposite of theocracy, but that’s true only if you want to impose theocracy at the federal level. In general, Christian Reconstructionists favor a radically decentralized society, with communities ruled by male religious patriarchs. Freed from the power of the Supreme Court and the federal government, they believe that local governments could adopt official religions and enforce biblical law.”

“Paul has been able to create one of the strangest coalitions in American political history, bringing together libertarian hipsters with those who want to subject the sexually impure to Taliban-style public stonings. (Stoning is Reconstructionists’ preferred method of execution because it is both biblical and fiscally responsible, rocks being, in North’s words, “cheap, plentiful, and convenient.”)”

Bachmann is a creature of AIPAC. The only reason for Bachmann’s run was to neutralize reduce Ron Paul’s impact in Iowa. From day one, everything about Bachmann’s campaign as been custom designed for that purpose and no other. AIPAC would never in a million years support a candidate that had a chance in hell of actually implementing immigration restriction. They fashioned Bachmann into an Iowa-only lightning-rod. The reason Bachmann is easily the best on immigration is that AIPAC knows more about the US body politic than we do about ourselves.

As for Romney, he’ll probably do more damage than would Ron Paul simply because his lack of integrity makes it likely that whatever his intent, business as usual will prevail. At least with Ron Paul, he will carry out his erroneous policies on immigration and have enough integrity to actually compare the outcome predicted by his “Austrian school” ideologues to the actual outcome. Of course, it may be too late to reverse the damage by then but at least he may set the stage for the peaceful devolution of powers to the States so the States can set up their own border controls.

Here’s political and social reality. People don’t want a weird president and even conservative people find conspiracy theorizing people worthy of mental institutions. Ron Paul is that guy: weird, prone to conspiracy theories, and no track record of leadership. Plus he’s a total hypocrite and always fighting for pork in his home district. And he’s prone to saying idiotic things that suggest moral equivalence of our nation and its Arab and Muslim enemies. Was Iraq dumb? Yes, mostly. Were we engaged in great evil to the innocent Muslim people there. Uh, no. So he ain’t gonna fly. He’s flavor of the week for our radical and disatisfied base. But he’ll be in freefall soon. He’s a fucking weirdo, people don’t like him, and they have good reason not to.

PS Your boy Murray Rothbard saluted Nikita Kruschev during his US visit. Real mainstream appeal there in that Murray Rothbard.